Labor Day 2015
Crystal Lake

Fish Fry at Crystal Lake

We had big plans for a hike along scenic Meadow Mountain in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, but the weather was not cooperative and we had to scale back our plans. We hiked into Crystal Lake, a distance of a little over four miles. The hike is pretty much of a valley pound following old logging roads for much of the distance, then a scramble straight up the side of the mountain for a climb of about 300', and finally by trail through the forest and then the meadows below the lake.

Even though the trail follows old logging roads much of the way, nature has been busy reclaiming the area, making for a very brushy ascent at various stretches along the trail. We got to the lake in good time, about 3 pm, leaving us plenty of time for fishing and setting up camp.

The lake is a typical sub alpine Cascade lake - ringed by evergreens, but with a meadowed fringe that makes for a quite beautiful setting. Our hike in day was mostly cloudy, with a few sunny patches, but everthing got drenched as heavy rains began late at night. Shelby and Roger had some leakage problems in their tents, but while I dodged that problem, my tent site was on a slope so I was scrunched up to one side of the tent all night.

So instead of hiking up over the pass between Crystal and Meadow Lakes and heading out Meadow Mountain, we elected to stay in camp. So we followed the sage advice of fellow Kick Ass Trekker, Jason Smith, who after a very short day in Idaho's Sawtooth Wilderness, asked "Why should we go on hiking another six hours to get to some lake, when we are already at one?" So we hung out, fishing in the rain, warming up at the campfire, and drying out wet sleeping bags.

To get the plugin just Google "videolan" or CLICK HERE FOR DOWNLOAD for Windows. There is a MAC version as well. Disable the Quicktime plugin if you use Videolan.

If you want to save photos to your computer, click the box under the thumbnails of the photos you want to download. Then click the "Download" button at the top of the album. Pick the size you'd like to download (Original is best)and the photos will be downloaded to a folder of your choice.

enlarge 15KB, 791x10243PDF file: click on Thumbnail and then open file.Statistics of our Hike to Crystal Lake - Points correspond to markers on map.

enlarge 311KB, 1024x7684Getting ready to head out at the trailhead.

enlarge 338KB, 1024x7685Crystal Lake.

enlarge 360KB, 1024x7686Roger at the upper end of the lake fishing.

enlarge 297KB, 1024x7687Shelby at the lake outlet trying his luck - he got one small fish.

enlarge 450KB, 1024x7688The Crystal Lake Kybo - many camps in the Glacier Peak wilderness have "Kybo's" for the convenience and for keeping the water supply safe for campers.Obviously, it would not be safe to use this one!

enlarge 252KB, 1024x7689View of the meadows near the outlet of the lake. The pass in the background is where we had intended to go.

enlarge 381KB, 1024x76810Roger caught a nice fish, and we had it for supper along with onions and garlic (courtesy of Shelby). Those red things are not tomatoes, but Hickory Farms Beefstick slices. I had a Beefstick, cheese, and onion sandwich, while Roger and Shelby had fish sandwiches (on Fred Meyer cheese rolls).

enlarge 375KB, 1024x76811On our "rest" day we did some serious fishing and had another fish fry for dinner. These are some of the nice rainbow trout we caught. (that's an 11 inch skillet).

enlarge 349KB, 1024x76812Our campsite: Shelby and Roger's tents, with the lake in the background.

enlarge 357KB, 1152x64721Shelby cooking the trout over a bed of coals. Bear Grylls has nothing on Shelby - everything was soaked through and when you walked it was like walking on a wet sponge, yet Shelby was able to get a fire started and keep it going without resorting to gas or fire starters, and without an axe or saw.

enlarge 392KB, 1024x76826Shelby at the junction of the Crystal Lake and Meadow Mountain trails. This used to be a good road - in 1986, Andrew and I drove up this road four miles farther to the then Meadow Mountain trailhead.As you can see, nature is very quickly reclaiming the road.